Mariana Katz

Mariana Katz is a historian of modern Latin America, specializing in the Southern Cone. She researches and teaches on the history of labor, slavery, indigeneity, and popular politics in Latin America. A native of Argentina, she began her academic journey at the University of Buenos Aires and received her PhD in History from Columbia University in 2025. 

She is currently working on her first book, tentatively titled The Other State Builders: Coerced Workers and the Making of the Paraguayan Republic (1811-1870). The book examines the role of labor coercion in the formation of new republics through the understudied, yet fascinating case of Paraguay—a state that mobilized unfree work to an extent unparalleled in Latin America. Blending social and political history, The Other State Builders examines the lives, labor, and actions of the thousands of state-held enslaved people, tributaries, convicts, soldiers, and drafted peasants who forged the Paraguayan republic. The book reveals the original strategies that these workers developed against the backdrop of an authoritarian republic—how they leveraged their positions in the state’s labor force to challenge authorities, secure resources and privileges, and advance their own visions of a fair administration of the state and its resources. Overall, The Other State Builders argues that labor coercion was more than a relic from the colonial past or a tool for capital accumulation: it was also central to the establishment of sovereign polities in post-independence Latin America. The dissertation on which the book is based was awarded two interdisciplinary prizes from sections of the Latin American Studies Association (Best Dissertation in the Humanities and Social Sciences about the Southern Cone, and honorable mention for Best Dissertation on Nineteenth-Century Latin America) and one from the Southern Historical Association (honorable mention for the Richmond Brown Dissertation Prize in Latin American History). The research has been made possible by generous support from the Social Science Research Council, the New York Public Library, Yale’s Beinecke Library, and the Council of Latin American History, among others.  

In parallel to her monograph, she is also developing a separate research project on the history of political movements led by Indigenous Guaraní people in the borderlands of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. As part of this project, she is preparing a critical edition and translation of Guaraní-language documents in collaboration with linguist Leonardo Cerno.

Articles

• “Slavery in an Authoritarian Republic: The Policing of Dissent and the Rise of State Slavery in Paraguay (1821–1840).” Slavery & Abolition 44, no. 4 (December 2023), 760–783. Available online (please email if you need access).
• “Artesanos hispanoamericanos del siglo XIX: identidades, organizaciones y acción política”, co-written with Gabriel Di Meglio and Tomás Guzmán. Almanack, no. 23 (December 2019), 275–315. Available online.
• “Los artesanos proteccionistas. Buenos Aires, primera mitad del siglo XIX.” Economía y Política 4, no. 2 (December 2017), 5-36. Available online.

• “¿De quién son las vacas? Percepciones del Estado entre los trabajadores de las estancias de la patria (1820-1850).” In Un Estado para armar. Aproximaciones a la construcción estatal en el Paraguay, edited by Ignacio Telesca, 135-50. Buenos Aires: SB, 2024.
• “Embodying Argentina’s Origin Myth: The Cabildo of Buenos Aires from Paper to Brick,” co- written with Gabriel Di Meglio. In Iconic National Monuments and the Stories We Make them Tell, edited by Torleif Hamre, 199-230. Oslo: Scandinavian Academic Press, 2024.